The F List - Alessandra Torre Page 0,45

butt cramming into the opposite end of the loveseat. "I helped you. No one would know who Emma Blanton was without me.”

“You honestly believe that, don’t you? You honestly think that you alone are responsible for everything I’ve busted my butt for?” She pushed to her feet and turned around, jabbing a finger in my chest.

“No punching…” Dana warned.

I grabbed her finger and rose, the action causing a mad scramble of cameras and riggings as they tried to fit us both into the shot. “I think that from the moment you ate my lunch at Frenchy’s, you’ve milked every possible interaction with me to get the biggest media coverage you can.”

Her eyes held mine, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think we were about to kiss. I certainly wanted to. I bet her mouth took as well as it gave. If she’d fight me or melt. Kiss back or concede. I wanted to taste the sugar and donut sprinkles and deepen our kiss until her back was sinking into the loveseat cushion and my knees were settling in on either side of her, and her hand was on the drawstring of my shorts, and her breath was ragged against my lips, and she was—

“I hate you.” She said it simply and sadly, then stepped back, pulling her hand free of mine. “Do me a favor and stay away from me.”

"Yeah, that's not going to happen if we can help it," Dana spoke up. "Can you both sit back down please?"

"No." I reached up and undid the mic tucked behind my ear. "I'm done."

“Done for like fifteen minutes, okay?” Dana scurried after me, ducking under lighting rigs and hopping over cord lines as she tried to catch up. “Because then we need to shoot you doing some laps in the pool.”

“Yeah, fine.” I bit out. “Fifteen minutes.”

I didn't look back, so I don't know what Emma did, but I didn't see her again for the rest of that day.

“We all thought it was going to happen. He was looking down at her and holding her hand on his chest and the electricity between them was popping all over the place. He was about to kiss her, and Emma had to kiss him back. I mean, come on—he's CASH MITCHELL. If there's a hotter guy in Hollywood, I don't know of him. And he's so freaking nice. I was working on a lighting rig the day before, and he stopped to help, because I was having trouble reaching the connector. Like… the other cast members don't even see us. But he did, and he asked me how my day was going, and if I was looking up at him and he wanted to kiss me, I'd fling my arms around his neck in a New York minute.

After he left, Dana asked Emma if it was true, what Emma had said—about hating him. And Emma said the strangest thing. She said that sometimes you say things because you have too, not because you mean them. And Dana asked what she meant by that—which was the same question I had. I mean, what does that even mean? But Emma didn’t give her anything else. She said ‘next question’ as if she was the president, and we were all just members of the press. I thought Dana would push it, but she didn’t. Dana just moved on.

What Dana didn't ask, and what all of us were waiting for—was why Emma went to Cash's room last night. But I think she wanted to catch that moment in front of Cash. And we had time. We had five more weeks ahead of us.”

Lauren Flan, Assistant Director, House of Fame

50

#thinking

EMMA

I didn’t know if I could do five more weeks of this. It’d only been a few days, and I’d already punched Cash and crawled into his bed. There was a very real possibility that I would either kill him or fall in love with him, and I’d already spent five years obsessing over the man. If I fell past the stage of infatuation and into genuine emotion… what then?

For him, it would be fun. For me, it would be disastrous. Because the show and our fling would eventually end. And he'd continue on, and I would fall apart.

I liked to think that I was chasing the fame and the followers for my own self-fulfillment, but had this all just been to catch his attention? If so, that was unhealthy and disturbing.

I needed to figure myself out. This